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Are you going to HI-TEC 2013? Bio-Link community members will be heading up sessions on topics ranging from biotech credentialing to bioluminescent bacteria. Since members of the Bio-Link community are involved in so many sessions, we compiled this guide to help you find out where and when Bio-Link sessions are being held.

On Sunday, Edgar Troudt from CUNY Kingsborough Community College, in Brooklyn, NY will be talking about social media and mobile technologies.

Sunday 8:30 am to noon.

Social Media and Mobility—What YOU Can Do in Your Classroom Today

This session discusses how an educational program, business, or non-profit can manage its online presence and blend mobility for attracting customers. The session will be of particular interest to those looking to leverage existing social network websites and mobile applications to their own use. Participants will have the ability to create and use QR codes and experiment with several different types of social networks. The session will be highly interactive and filled with useful tips that can be implemented immediately without high-end computing skills. Case studies of social media at work in the classroom will also be presented.Participants should bring a wifi-enabled laptop. Smartphones and tablets will also be useful.

Dr. Celeste Carter will be participating in a session bright and early Monday morning on NSF funding opportunities and grant writing.

NSF Funding Opportunities and Proposal Writing Strategies

The first part of the workshop will concentrate on funding opportunities at the National Science Foundation in supporting STEM education with an emphasis on ATE, the revised TUES solicitation, the new WIDER, and Exploration and Expedition programs. This part of the workshop will also discuss proposal review and strategies for developing competitive proposals for undergraduate STEM education projects. The workshop will offer a systematic process for converting an idea into a competitive NSF educational project.

Later in the day, you can tour biotech companies and learn more about developing products for personalized medicine or tour local wineries and learn about high tech methods used in wine production.

Monday 1 - 5 pm

Technology and Wine Making Tour (limited to 25)

(Board bus at 12:30; Includes lunch)

Join us on this fascinating tour of Flat Creek Winery and learn about the latest techniques in grape and wine production and about the new VESTA-supported wine-making program at Texas State Technical College. Lunch and optional wine tasting are included. Some of the topics to be covered are how optical spectroscopy and geographical information technology are being used to map vineyard production, modern methods of pest control, how space-age materials are replacing corks, how micro-oxygenation influences tannins, how supercritical carbon dioxide is used in aroma analysis, what "aged in oak" means today, and the role of logistics in production.

Personalized Medicine is Changing Healthcare Tour (limited to 20)

(Board bus at 12:45 pm)

Several of the biotechnology companies in Austin are involved in developing tools that will help to personalize how patients are diagnosed and treated. Come learn about personalized medicine and visit companies in the area that are developing products used in personalized medicine. Depending on the size of the group, the companies visited may include Assuragen, Myriad RBM, Molecular Templates, and GenTox. This is not just for biotechnologists but for anyone who has an interest in how advances in biotechnology affect the healthcare industry.

This is session is a must for biotechnology educators. Dr. Elaine Johnson, Dr. Linnea Fletcher, and Dr. Jeanette Mowery will lead a discussion on identifying and arriving at a consensus on a common core of competencies for biotechnicians.

Session description:

Community College Consortium for Bioscience Credentials: Bio-Link's Role and a Texas Example

Bio-Link is one of four hubs in the Community College Consortium for Bioscience Credentials, recently funded by the U.S. Department of Labor TAACCCT program, TC-23761-12-60-A-37. The consortium consists of 12 community colleges organized in four subsector hubs, led by Forsyth Technical Community College in North Carolina. Project goals include harmonizing and validating common core competencies across different sectors of bioscience workforce education; providing job-directed education for displaced workers; building industry-recognized stackable credentials and increasing capacity for bioscience career pathways. This session will illustrate the process of validating core competencies and developing assessments with examples from the Texas Skill Standards System.

There will be an additional session on Bioscience Core Competencies on Weds from 1:30 - 2:15 pm in 8C, San Antonio. The second session will be led by Lori Wojciechowski, Richard Snyder, and Tamara Mandell, from the University of Florida Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology, Alachua, FL

3:00 - 4:00 pm There are two Bio-Link related sessions in this time slot.

High-tech manufacturing depends on quality. The machines that are closest to perfect are biological, and it is their quality systems that are the enabling factor. In this workshop we will examine the biological systems that enable bacterial evolution, since the ability of an organism or organization to adapt is critical to survival and success. Working in groups, participants will apply one or many of these strategies to analyze a system or process of their own choosing or one that we have selected such as “Your Academic Department.” Participants will practice thinking outside the box for solutions to high-tech problems.

Collaboration Among Educators in Enabled and Enabling Technologies
Today’s technologies overlap in many ways. One technology is used to enhance, enable or support applications that are vital to other technologies. Curricula and teaching materials developed for a particular technology often can be useful in other technical fields. Twenty-two ATE Centers are attempting to create an information retrieval system, which identifies and classifies enabled technologies to support sharing of existing materials and guide the creation of new materials that are linked among various technologies. Center efforts in the past eight months have identified at least seven technologies that are strongly enabling other technical fields: photonics, IT, communications, electronics, materials, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Others have been identified, but are less comprehensive. Examples are presented and participants will be engaged in activities to further develop the Retrieval System, and to show how this system will facilitate collaboration to access useful materials and eliminate redundancy in materials development.

Eavesdropping on Working Technicians from ATE Programs
Back by popular interest, this session features working technicians who tell their stories, share their work experiences, and help educators design learning experiences that prepare them for the workplace.

Fully Online and Hybrid Learning in a Biotechnology Education Program
This interactive session will explore best practices in developing courses in a biotechnology program that include fully online coursework as well as blends of online plus in-person teaching and learning. The goal of such course design is to maximize student value of in-person contact, which focuses on skill development and essential experiential learning, while traditional lecture and discussion move to a flexible, online format. Examples of blended classes will include biostatistics and bioprocessing. Examples of fully online classes in data analysis and regulatory practices will be covered as well.

11:15 - noon Get your running shoes ready! Three Bio-Link related sessions are scheduled in this time slot. Log in to Twitter and you can virtually attend all three.

room 7A Sabine

Determining Evidence of Success: How Do You Know and Why Are You Sure?
Projects seeking to transform technician education are compelled to present evidence of their success. Choosing the right data and collection methods for this determination can be as important as planning for the project’s implementation. This session will present strategies for determining the types of outcome data and methods of collection that can best serve your project. A panel of representatives from ATE centers engaged in scaling innovations will discuss how they planned and implemented their scaling strategies and how they determined their success. Concepts, processes, and tools that were determined to aid in this success will be presented as well.

Articulated Technological Education Pathways Project: A Curriculum for Promoting High-Tech Careers
The Articulated Technological Education Pathways project develops three semester-long courses for high school students that provide a bridge from high school technical programs to community college programs in technician education. The three courses address standards-driven technology concepts and skills and STEM career choices in biochemical technology, information and communications technology, and materials and manufacturing technology. Curriculum development in this project is guided by contemporary pedagogical practices and matched to industry competencies and STEM academic learning standards. The materials are primarily digital and emphasize web-based learning and hands-on, design-based, virtual and hands-on modeling activities that can be delivered as hybrid courses.

Bacteria Illuminate the World of Biotechnologists
Participate in a hands-on session and learn about a special kind of bacteria that are bioluminescent, that is, that produce light. These bacteria normally live symbiotically inside a species of squid. When the squid hunt at night, the bacteria generate light, making the squid nearly invisible in the moonlight. Participants will have the opportunity to work with the bacteria and manipulate the conditions that cause them to produce light. Participants will also learn how biotechnologists harness bioluminescence in the laboratory for a variety of practical applications.

Industry Credential for Biotechnology
Learning science in the context of industrial applications is a paradigm shift that opens doors to careers in biotechnology. The University of Florida’s Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology (UF CERHB), federal and state government, and biotechnology industries partnered to develop opportunities for multi-level career pathways in biotechnology, including our entry-level, industry-approved credential of “biotechnician assistant.”The credential is built on the academic and performance standards of Florida’s secondary Industrial Biotechnology program, which includes postsecondary credit through a statewide articulation agreement.